FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA - PAGE 3

It wasn't until a few years ago, after several excellent galleries showing Indian contemporary art had already opened in New York, that I started looking seriously at art being made today across the hugely important and increasingly international Indian subcontinent. Of course, I was aware of the names of important Indian artists who had already had considerable international exposure, such as Francis Newton Souza, MF Husain, Jamini Roy and Benodebehari Mukherjee, but I had never had the opportunity to see a major exhibition of their work.

The UK and US are witnessing Indian artists springing up all over the country. And the works that are being sold at a tag that would make even the die-hard romantic wake up and pinch himself. While we get to know of many works that breach the million-dollar club, what often remains unsaid is that they were never expected to sell at this high a price and so were kept at the back pages of the sale catalogue. Auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's have detailed catalogues for all their sales where the objects expected to top demand are given in the beginning, and the rest follows in that order.

By Harish Nambiar The 2002 communal riots in Gujarat changed the route my friend and I were to take for a three-week motorcycle journey across India in early March that year. I landed up in Odisha, the new destination we chose, and thence at Hirapur, a small village outside Bhubaneswar, with an art conservationist friend from INTACH, Anupam Sah. There, we discovered a small, abandoned temple full of exquisite sculpture of the 64 yoginis in the middle of paddy fields. Though none of them were the formal goddesses any Hindu in the area recognised, the villagers made daily offerings, lit lamps and incense sticks.

KOLKATA: Christie's Asian Art Week kicked off on March 18 with the sales of South Asian Modern and Contemporary art. The Shelley Souza Collection, a tranche of Francis Newton Souza's paintings, achieved $2.8 million. In the same breath, the South Asian sale totalled $7.3 million. Deepanjana Klein, head of sale, South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art, New York, commented : "This sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art demonstrated a tremendous amount of international interest , with buyers of the top lots bidding eagerly from around the globe for these significant works.

NEW DELHI: Global auctioneer Christie's, who made a splash in India with its maiden auction in Mumbai last December, is holding a public exhibition of select artworks set for sale at the Asian Art Week in New York next month. The New York auction includes 26 masterpieces by modern masters such as V S Gaitonde, Francis Newton Souza and Bhupen Khakhar, alongside international contemporary artists sourced from the collection of Shumita and Arani Bose. An untitled work by Gaitonde painted in 1971 is among the highlights of the upcoming sale at Rockfeller Centre in New York on September 17 and the two-day public preview beginnig August 20 at the Taj Mahal hotel here.

KOLKATA: Christie's South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art sale in New York on March 20 saw a total of $8,574,875. Syed Haider Raza's Village en Fete, oil on canvas, painted in 1964, realized $1,859,750. Hugo Weihe , international director of Asian Art and international specialist head, South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art, New York, said in an email statement: ""The sale of South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art was a success on all levels, with works by Modern masters, such as Syed Haider Raza , Francis Newton Souza, and Tyeb Mehta performing extremely well.

KOLKATA: Sotheby's will present Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art sale on September 18 as part of the Asia Week series of auctions and events. The sale will be led by American Survey Officer from 1969, a very rare and early canvas by Bhupen Khakhar that comes from a Private Midwestern Collection (estimate $180,000-220,000). The work is representative of a critical moment in Khakhar's career as he developed a local and idiosyncratic language for Pop Art in India and has never before appeared at auction.

KOLKATA: On September 17, Christie's will present the Fall sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art in New York, which will offer over 95 exceptional works, with estimates ranging from $2,000 to $600,000 and many from private collections. The sale will feature works by modern masters, including Syed Haider Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Francis Newton Souza, Akbar Padamsee , Maqbool Fida Husain , and Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, as well as an impressive selection of contemporary works from celebrated artists, such as Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, and Jitish Kallat . The sale will also feature Sri Lanka's most celebrated 20th century artist George Keyt alongside fellow '43 Group artists George Claessen and Ivan Peries . The cover lot of the sale is Raza's Italian Village, painted in 1953, the largest work from the period to come to auction (estimate: $550,000-750,000)

NEW DELHI: The "Imbecile Girl in a Green Blouse" by contemporary Indian painter Francis Newton Souza is up for grabs at the Saffronart's summer online art auction upcoming mid next week. Works by the co-founder of the Progressive Artists' Group in India had fetched a whopping 5.4 million pounds at the Christie's London auction recently, where 147 of the 152 lots on offer doubled the pre-sale upper limit of 2.3 million pounds. Painted in 1957, Souza's Imbecile Girl is estimated to fetch between Rs 1,21,00,000- Rs 1,54,00,000.

NEW DELHI: A series of serigraph and a book of postcards created by late modernist painter M F Husain along with works by Manjit Bawa and Sunil Das have notched up attractive sales at a recent auction by relatively new auction house Art Bull. Powerful artworks by the 'icecream painter' Bawa and Das went under the hammer fetching Rs 9 million and Rs 2.15 million respectively when they went under the hammer at the auction titled "The Spring" here on April 20. The book of postcards dated 1967 were sourced from the family and friends of M F Husain and has been in their collection for more than three decades.